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Comment by kccqzy | Hacker News Reader

Your worldview aligns very well with what Apple is doing anyways. All you need to do is to use macOS, and only download apps from the Mac App Store (because they are sandboxed). And millions of non-technical Apple users are doing just that. It seems like what you describe is basically already a reality, so why is there a need for a reworking from the ground up?

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It's still not like the iPhone sandboxing, it's a bandaid. Many of them genuinely need wide access to function, so just asking for permission doesn't really solve the problem. Like when you open a file in the picker, that's actually granting RW access to the entire dir permanently. On top of fixing the technical side, they need it to feel safe to the user, which right now it doesn't.

Separately, idk if anyone is only installing from the Mac App Store. You can't even get Chrome that way. It's also just bad, like it bothers you about login, then apps get stuck in half-downloaded state.

But yeah if anyone can pull this off, it'd be Apple, seeing how frequently they'll break apps by requiring new APIs.

Well on iOS if you grant an app Files & Folders permission it also has permanent RW access to all your files visible in the Files app. I could use for example Möbius Sync (Syncthing) to sync all my documents from my desktop, then use PDF Viewer to annotate a PDF that was stored in the Möbius sync app. Users want this behavior which is why Apple finally relented and added the Files app and associated APIs. Why wouldn’t users feel safe?

It's a niche feature that most apps don't need to function. If apps relied on that harder and people were constantly managing important files in there like on a desktop, they probably wouldn't feel safe with the permissions.

I had to look to see what's even in my phone's Files app... looks like WhatsApp saved its received photos in there and I accidentally downloaded a couple of files in Safari. Except I didn't give WhatsApp permission, so idk what the rules are with that.

All 3 of the big OSes have extreme amounts of business critical code from the 90s and 80s. Code that is complete spaghetti, with no automated tests, no peer reviews, no changes for decades, and written in C of course (objective C in case of apple)

That alone is a reason to start over with a from-scratch mes desktop OS implementation

Microsoft and Apple both have more than enough money to do it. It would be a ~10 year project. It would not make money which is why it’ll never be done.

1. Starting from scratch is rarely a good idea. 2. It always sounds like a better idea than it actually is. 3. Item 2 is true even if you think you've accounted for item 1.

Is there something specific that you want that cannot be implemented reasonably on existing systems?

Unless you have a specific compelling benefit that only a rewrite can grant, focused narrow rewrites are the way.

Ok but if "it has a lot of ugly code" is the best reason to re-invent the OS, then we're not off to a very good start. It needs a purpose that the user can relate to.

Then again iOS is underpinned by a lot of that same code. I don't know if it needs to be that deep of a rewrite.

iOS is something of a ship of Theseus I believe, all the code has already been rewritten over the years, only the core architecture itself is unchanged from the 90s but with a modernized codebase

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